NTK: The Scary Real Reasons Behind Our Deepening National Security Crisis

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“Coming to you direct from our super secret studio”

in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C.

and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello, welcome to DSR's Need to Know, where each week we are joined by people we think and shed some light on the news. Today we are joined by two friends. People we respect enormously veterans of the US intelligence community, man who rose to great heights serving their country, John, Cypher and Mark Polymeropolis.

How are you guys doing? We're doing good, given the circumstances, sir. Let's start with the circumstances. Because I just don't think that we can have a conversation about US national security intelligence issues. Without reckoning the degree to which the President of the United States at 806 this morning,

saying that if Iran does not comply with essentially his request for total surrender, that he will destroy an entire civilization. That we, the United States will destroy an entire civilization. We've got some genocide in American history. I don't think we should overlook it. But we don't have modern American presidents calling for genocide.

Threatening genocide and threatening it not even in some abstract way, which would be pretty hideous. But putting a time clock on it, saying eight o'clock tonight, that's when it starts. And I'm just wondering, from your perspectives as national security professionals,

“what you think the consequences of that are and let's start with you, John?”

Sure. I mean, it's obviously horrific. In some way, we've got numb to the kind of crazy things that our President says. But this is essentially us throwing away our global leadership, throwing away any moral leadership in the world. And frankly, it's going to be throwing away credibility, because no matter what threats he makes in ultimatums he places, he's going to have to back down, we don't have the capability to do the things he claims we're going to do.

Unless he uses nuclear weapons, which then changes things for even further for the worse. And so, you know, these kind of threats, the next time trying to others are watching this and they're saying, oh, he's making these threats, he's going to destroy the civilization and of course he's going to back down, or they don't have the capability. There's only a few thousand troops out there. What the hell are we going to do? So I'm embarrassed by it as an American, but also as a former national security professional, I just think, you know,

those inside must be embarrassed, and they know what's our role in this that we're being told that we're going to destroy a civilization. We can't legally do it and we can't practically do it. John, I'm Mark. So there was, you know, it was an interesting kind of 24 hours because, and I'll address this absurd, true social post.

And a second, but don't forget yesterday, and the oval office, or on the White House lawn, in fact,

He was giving a disaster.

That's certainly more important than Janet genocide, but, but he was talking about the pending negotiations war with Iran next to a giant individual and a Easter Bunny outfit. And that is, and so that then compared to today where he, you know,

“I mean, it's not even, I think Ryan Goodman had just security was talking about like this is like, I mean, it's blatantly advocating for genocide against the Geneva convention.”

And I moved so outrageous what he said, and so I think John's right. I mean, we're not going to nuke Iran. But, you know, putting aside the global embarrassment and how preposterous that was, the question is, does this have an effect on Iranians? And the answer is no. Because as we just learned over the last several minutes, they've now shut down negotiations, because he sounds like a complete lunatic.

And it's not, this is not scaring them at all. It actually makes them realize that they're in the, in the cappards scene that, because they have the straight of our moves, Trump is looking desperate. This is a sign of weakness. And he sounds like a lunatic.

And the Iranians are not stupid. They also know that the U.S. military is not going to, you know, carry out any kind of efforts to destroy civilization. And then we're talking about the potential for things which are problematic, which are infrastructure strikes. There's a lot of debate on whether that's going to violate the law of law on conflict.

“But, but ultimately, does this kind of push us anywhere closer to a diplomatic solution?”

Any kind of resolution? I miss the answer is no. And so it's, for so many reasons it was, you know, his two social posts today was quite horrible. But again, don't forget yesterday, we were focused. At least I was on Trump next to a, the next to the, what the Easter Rabbit.

Well, there are a lot of manifestations of the insanity of the president. And I think making threats like this is a manifestation of that insanity.

Because regardless of what he does, it is now always in the context of having threatened this.

And, you know, John, while I take your point about, you know, we don't have the ability to eradicate this civilization, which, by the way, has existed for 5,000 years. We do have the ability, particularly by attacking civilian infrastructure, causing massive loss of life and immense amounts of suffering. I don't think most Americans are kind of aware of the fact that there are parts of Iran that in the summertime,

you know, go to 140 degrees. I mean, Iran is a country where there are weather extremes that mean you need the access to electricity. And of course, the other consequences of this in terms of food supplies in terms of the economy. Et cetera, are great.

“But, and please comment on that if you will, but the flip side of this, which I think is more important,”

is the Iranian said, well, you turn out our lights. We're going to turn out the lights throughout the region. And, you know, I think, you know, once again, the discussion turns to, are we on an escalatory ladder, or to flip the metaphor? Are we sinking into a quagmire?

And would the president undertaking these kind of attacks almost inevitably make our stay there a longer worse and less likely to be successful? Yeah, um, your point that we, we could do tremendous damage to their infrastructure and their population is true. And that, to me, that sort of resonates with our sense that often happens in this country as our mesmerized, our mesmerization in the sense that our military can do all these great things.

And our intelligence community has all these incredible exquisite abilities and powers.

But we've seen over the last few decades is that no matter how good our military is at carrying out tactical strikes and how good our intelligence is at finding bad people and supporting those type of things. Tactical success doesn't transfer to strategic success very well. You know, we've done, we've won the battle in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq and now in Iran and we lose the war. And this has happened again and again. So, and you can argue in this case already, it's clear to stop Iran getting the bomb.

We've given them a better weapon. They now understand that they can hold the straight hostage for decades to come and we really have no ability to stop them doing it. It's going to enrich them. It's going to give them power. It's going to show our weakness over time. So, just like we did in Afghanistan in Iraq and everything, yeah, we did some really cool stuff, but we lost. And it looks to me like in the lawn run here, we're losing and not just losing, you know, a war, but losing our moral sensibility.

But there's going to be a line at which you're going to get real pushback and professional military under the kind of things you can hit.

“I think that's a real question. I think it's a really important question.”

Mark, I saw somebody online today pointing out that, I don't know what the exact number was, but say, a dozen four star generals and admirals have been removed during the course of the period from the civil war to now. And nine or ten have been removed in the past year. And it is very clear that hegseth is with the blessing of the president of the United States involved in a kind of a purge of leadership. That's akin to the purge that took place in D.J., akin to the purge which take place in D.H.S., akin to the purge that's taking place in the intel community.

In order to find people who will follow illegal orders.

They fired the chaplain, right? What the hell is that mean? Well, well, that's part of the black guy, so they fired him. Well, yeah, but also, you know, hegseth is in the midst of a kind of a Christian nationalist. Yeah, Christian nationalist, you know, war. I mean, you know, when he did that press conference, all he was talking about is God and Easter and Jesus and all this other kind of stuff. And his pastor, who's a lunatic, who's calling for democratic, senatorial candidates to be crucified, you know, it's it's all a soup.

And you know, it's sometimes markets a little easy to get distracted by Easter bunnies and religious lunacy.

“But I think this restructuring the top of the US national security apparatus, which, by the way, includes the decapitation of the part I've written about my whole life, the National Security Council.”

And, you know, has the Iranians who deserve some credit for this has has the Iranians putting out social media posts saying, look at the regime change we've done in the US. Well, with with with pictures of of all of these admirals in generals with access through that anyway, where does it leave us with kind of decapitated national security apparatus. So, you know, I've had this discussion with, you know, friends of mine who are a former DOD, who have good reach into the idea as well. And so it's clear that's, you know, there are senior, senior leaders who have been removed.

And, you know, the South come command as well, presumably that was several months ago, he wasn't supportive of the strike, the boat strikes, you know, the chief staff of the army was just it was just let go. And so, you know, all of that is a significant concern. That said, they still will have to run these target lists by by DOD lawyers.

“And, and my, and just talking to people yesterday, they said, DOD was getting uncomfortable with this whole kind of infrastructure strike issue.”

Now, are they going to get people to sign off on it, presumably some of them, because as John said, some of these targets will be considered dual use and they will kind of lawyer this way through it. But, but you know, you can't, you can't escape what headset has just openly preached nonstop is that his goal was to remove these guardrails. And so, you know, I, I think there is a serious question on, you know, is, are things the same as they used to be, you know, in the first Trump administration when I was still at the agency, there were crazy things that came down from the White House that General Madison and, and, and, and, and Juna Haspel is CI director.

Stopped from ever recurring. Bob Woodward, I can talk about Bob Woodward, one of his, in one of his books, talked about at one point, Trump wanted to kill Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian leader, and that word kind of filtered down to us.

And the answer was was with, in only the way that two senior cabinet level officials could, could do is it kind of staffed it through and it just died because they, they said, we're never doing this.

And so, I don't know if you have those guardrails, still, and, you know, Dan Kane, who looks like an adult, and all of this, because every press conference he does is next to a crazy person in Pete Hexeth. But, you know, the chairman of Joint Chiefs does have some responsibility in giving military advice to the president and you wonder what he is saying on these things. And, you know, you would always want to have anyone in a senior position have their resignation letter and their desk like, we can't do this.

Because especially if it's going to go down the road of, you know, potentially committing war crimes, you know, Trump's never going to go down for this. I think it's going to happen to President Trump. He's this guy is, of course, as this history of being Teflon, but, you know, senior leaders in the military are going to get in some trouble if they, if they carry out, you know, what ends up being illegal orders or war crimes. And so, I think it's a very valid question, and that, you know, but, and there should be scrutiny on this one key point on this David, and it might not be relevant now, but that's why the midterms are so important.

If the Democrat is when presumably they'll win the House and perhaps the Senate too, things will change a little bit.

“And so, you know, there is some politics involved here because right now, in some ways, that we are a bit powerless to hold government accountable, that could change in November.”

Yeah, it could. You hope it will. On the other hand, you know, when people say, well, you know, he would never cancel the elections or declare national emergency or take big draconian action there.

You know, we're also talking about whether or not US military officers will follow presidential order to commit genocide. So we're, we're, we're in uncharted waters here. Sean strategically going back to the quag buyer question, sure does look like we're sinking deeper and deeper into this thing, and it has broad geopolitical consequences. You know, that the Ukrainians aren't going to be able to get weapon systems they want.

The Russians are benefiting from this in manifold ways. We seem to be lifting sanctions on them left and right and the Chinese are not just benefiting.

The Chinese are replenishing Iranian abilities to build missiles. We actively know that. And so, you know, when you look at quag buyers and how this could escalate, don't those things shouldn't those things.

“And the broader implications, I'm not to mention, Trump's ransom about NATO, aren't the shouldn't the broader implications be of great concern to us as well?”

I think you know the answer to that and answer to course, yes, and it's not even just quag buyer this time. We've been in long wars and recent decades, but it's just a, it's essentially a disaster strategic disaster. You're taking the most powerful richest country in history of the world that sort of after World War II when the way the world had been structured led to two horrific world wars. We sort of took over the, you know, essentially security for the allies in the world and created a sense of stability and it's being thrown out the door.

And so in the process, you're strengthening Russia, you're strengthening China, you're absolutely right.

And also, I'm really surprised, in a sense, we haven't learned from the last few decades of our activity, is that as the biggest, most powerful military and intelligence and diplomatic power out there,

“we continue to lose because all of these other powers are realized that if you can't take a sign directly, you use asymmetric means. That's what terrorists do, right? They look for weaknesses.”

The Russians have been doing it with hybrid warfare, whatever you want to call it, political warfare for decades as well. But everybody else has figured it out too. Look, the Iranians know you just hang in there, and you know, the Vietnamese did it, the, the, the Afghans did it is, you don't have to win the battles to win the strategic war for yourself. And so, you know, yes, again, we have great military capability, but if we don't put that into a context of where we come out the other end stronger, we keep coming out the other end.

And in this case, probably even worse because we're destroying the world economy, we're strengthening the hand of China, what we're caught up in all this mess, they're continuing to move forward and they're able to go to other countries and say, "Look, you can't trust the United States on these things." And the one thing we had that they didn't have is allies, and that's the same tie. At the same time, we're doing this, we're crap and on our allies. So, it's a disaster as far as I'm concerned. And so many levels, Mark, let me ask you to do something that, you know, I think you would, you know, not have the latitude to do when you're at the agency, maybe over lunch at the Vienna Inn with John Cypher, but, and that is, look at the broader Middle East where you've spent a lot of time.

To me, it looks like almost every assumption that you had when you were working there, about who our allies are, who stabilizing forces are in the region, who destabilizing forces are in the region, who's going to protect our interests in the region, how we're going to protect our interests in the region, who the big players are from outside the region that will influence it. It looks to me like, all of that has changed in really substantial ways. But what doesn't look like to you, you've spent that in time.

David, that's a great question. I mean, and so I guess you could go back, and we talked about the Middle East, oh, back to October 7th, and so October 7th is was kind of an event which certainly did shake so many things up because

The dominant power in the region, but sort of because then Israel wildly over stretches everywhere. You have the rise of Turkey now and the great game between Israel and Turkey and that's something that that, you know, maybe a decade ago actually were allied together.

“Now they are bitter enemies. If you talk to Israeli national security planners, they're fairly hysterical about Turkey and Turkey is going to be kind of their big enemy.”

You have an administration that's tilted wildly towards the Gulf, certainly to our allies when you talk about Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the UAE.

Yet events that have just unfolded now certainly would argue that they actually have to also look towards China into the future too. So the giant great game in the Middle East has changed rather dramatically. You have, you know, our biggest ally for, you know, which is just the conventional wisdom over the years was Israel. Because Israel, I think, you know, squandered incredible sympathy after October 7 and now if you take a look at both opinion polls in the United States, as well as kind of on a bipartisan level, the support for Israel as an ally, the idea of supporting Israel militarily is plummeted massively on the democratic side and even on the Republican side too.

Amongst the younger Republican voters, same thing. So, you know, the future US is really relationship is a bit in doubt too. And kind of throw that all on top of the notion of the Middle East was a place where I thought at the beginning of the Trump administration, if you read the national security strategy, that we would be pivoting away from and shifting entirely towards the Pacific towards the fight with China. Yet now we have actually, in essence, almost, you know,

“I mean, it eviscerated all of our weapon stocks in the Middle East. I mean, China could have free reign over Taiwan in about a millisecond right now.”

And then we've also, as John noted, crap on all of our allies, not only NATO, but Trump was howling yesterday about South Korea and Japan. Again, critical for the fight against China.

South Koreans don't forget, I think, resupply to us with the 155 millimeter shells when our stocks were low too. So, I mean, there's not an ally he can't crap all over. Oh, you know, so I think there is no strategic plan. There is no national security strategy. Trump moves like a warlord. He's a mafia boss, you know, friends and allies come and go. And so I'm not sure where we actually stand right now. But the region certainly has changed. And I think there's a really good piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning talking about how, particularly our European allies, many of our allies look at us and just kind of shake their head and they say, you know, we're actually essentially dealing with a warlord. We don't, the United States does not stand for anything anymore.

“And you go back to what, you know, John and I did for many years and you had to have this notion of American exceptionalism.”

The idea of, you know, the bright shining city on the hill in America as the kind of the leader or the biggest promoter of political and economic liberalism, even though we don't always adhere to it, that's still how we recruited assets. That's still how we maintain our alliances and that's kind of all thrown up in the year or two. So that's a very long-winded answer is that everything is kind of scrambled.

And kind of the great game certainly is back in the Middle East, but with with players, the dominance, you know, it still remains to be seen, but it's things have certainly changed.

Yeah, well, and you know, Trump doesn't listen to advice. We know that. He doesn't listen to intelligence. We know that. If you ask Trump, where will Iran go to replace its centrifuges? He won't know the answer to the question, although they use the same kind of centrifuges as the North Koreans, the Pakistanis have given them help with their program. But Whitkov has a real estate deal with some Pakistanis, and so he's like, you know, hey, let's work with them for now. But John, let me switch this to another frame, which is, you know, the one from which both you and Mark come, and that is, you know, the role of the intelligence community and all of this.

Earlier you mentioned that, you know, you don't think or you think it may be the case that some senior military officers won't follow through on some of the orders that they get. And I keep getting the question from people who know that I live in the Middle East community that it's like, well, Trump can't keep going on. What are the signs? You know, are the Republicans going to turn on him? No, you know, it's a court going to turn on him some days, yes, some days now.

And they're like, where are you going to see the sign? And I said, to me, the sign will be, and the sign to Trump is going to be leaks.

You're going to be things that come out of the national security community that say, no, Mr. President, you're wrong and you don't want to get into a pissing match with us on this. And, you know, with regard to this war and Iran. A couple of the most damaging ones seem to come from intelligence community assessments that say, oh, yeah, they can actually build missiles and oh, yeah, the regime change isn't actually what you're saying it is, Mr. President.

“And they seem to be very strategic leaks from within the intelligence community and the question is, do you sense that there is push back there? Do you sense there are people there that will stand up?”

It's a really good point and I'm seeing two kinds of leaks from the intelligence community and both of them are bad. When you mentioned that it looks like, yeah, there's people strategically leaking to say, you know, when Trump says this stuff, we want to make it clear that we in the sea, I are not telling him that stuff no matter what he says. Then there's other leaks we just saw recently with this when they found this downed flyer that was in Iran. Similarly, the leadership of CIA was bragging and leaking that all the CIA played a key role in this and our special equipment caught him in art. They couldn't have done it without us. So the leadership is bragging about secret things that they shouldn't do to try to impress Trump.

“And then other people are leaking to try to protect themselves. But of course, would Trump that does it work because he's going to then see them as a greater deep state and look to trust them less and and attack them less.”

In the long term things, right? Over time, you know, the intelligence community is not going to change radically right away, but over time it's going to be less trusted internally, it's going to be less candid internally and actually more cautious in the way it does things over time and it's going to it's going to weaken the place it's not necessarily going to be, you know, today or tomorrow, but it's going to get less, you know, less talented people are going to want to come there. And all of these sort of slow things, you know, in 2016, the word of the year from the dictionary was post-truth. It's a post-truth world and it's becoming more and more so. And frankly, a serious intelligence service cannot operate and approach post-truth world.

And we're getting to a point where it's damaging the foundations of our intelligence structure. And so I really, I really worry about it.

You know, I thought it was kind of interesting that when the president did his post-rescue mission press conference on Monday, the first person he had speak was John Raffcliffe, the head of the CIA.

And the CIA was obviously very proud of the role in this. Although, frankly, as an observer, I'm not sure the message America wants to say, "Send the world is where the world's rescue mission superpower." And I don't know that that, like, sends a very strong message. But with regard to this, just in a practical sense, Mark, first of all, I saw you sort of nodding and smiling to what John was saying. So any reaction to what John was saying was good. But I have got a belief that the person in this administration, and who is most opposed to what we are doing in the Middle East right now, based on past record, is Tulsi Gabbard.

Who is Kukufra Kukopov's doesn't belong in her job, but having said that, you know, it has been opposed to this kind of thing throughout her very weird career. And I just can't imagine that votes well for her or her role. And I do note she wasn't at that press conference, so I just like, "What's your thought there?" And so Tulsi is not relevant anymore. I mean, she's certainly been kept out of the loop on all of these things, you know, her and John Rackliffe hate each other.

“Trump sort of tolerates her. I think that she's very short for her job. He probably just wants to sequence this as, you know, as Pamela.”

Not to fire all the women first.

That which is -- it seems to be, you know, between Christi and Pam Bondi. But you know, I was smiling on this thing because, you know, the agents, you know, Rackliffe got up there, and it was the usual kind of licking the boots of Trump. It was really embarrassing. Now, the agency has bragged before in public, you know, after the bin Laden raid, I mean, we made a goddamn movie about it. It was your dark 30 was essentially a CIA production. And so it's been happened before, but the thing with the agency role in this, I mean, and John knows this because in a chat we were talking about it.

It was -- it's a little bit preposterous, it's actually not journalism, it's not reporting. But I think on the bigger issue and something that I still have --

“I mean, it's -- I'm sorry to interrupt, but while a centerpiece of the president's wrath there was, we're going to come after leapers.”

Right. I mean, so it's -- this was from the public affairs shop. I mean, it was pretty comical. And then the president and his press conference yesterday says, the CIA has some kind of abilities, and we can see from up high, you know, from 40 miles away. I mean, if I had said that, and if you look at little airplanes back on my wall, like I'd be fired, like you can't say those things.

You know, so the president can say what everyone wants, but -- but there's a bigger issue here, and it's something that I haven't figured out.

You know, Shane Harris wrote a piece of the Atlantic, I wrote a piece for just security, and it was a little bit of a dueling pieces and Shane's a good friend, but Shane's contention was this -- the intelligence community is providing good product, and everybody's ignoring it. My contention is I'm not sure about that because we're really good at tactical intelligence, everything that I did in the GWAT and John makes fun of me on, you know, about when I wore my Solomon boots and ran around in Carbo pants and my cool guy watch.

We're really good at killing people, but we're not good at the old kind of stuff, which is strategic intelligence. And so -- so the question I have is, if we are providing the goods, if there is stuff in the PDB that predicted whatever one of us thought was the Iranian outcome, we were reactive all the time. I mean, the idea that somehow hegseth and Trump were surprised that Iranian reactions. I mean, that's crazy. So was it in the PDB, you know, and the PDB is received by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, now it's the security adviser, same position.

“Basically, you know, 25 people in the government actually much more. And so, you know, the role of intelligence in this, I think, is really important.”

Either we got it totally wrong, or we presented it to policymakers. And even if Trump doesn't care, does that mean everybody else got it.

Basically, you know, you know, Radcliffe is like, look, I know our intelligence collection and analysis says Iran is going to do this.

But then we presented it to Trump and he just ignored it. I mean, I think that is worth congressional oversight, you know, both from the Senate and the House sides, who are generally have been useless. And so I think, you know, it's important to know that because in the future, you know, we do have to grade the intelligence community on this, both the collection and the analysis.

“Did we present our findings to policymakers, the ignored it, or was all of this actually not of quality, or was it politicized? I think that's a really interesting question.”

But there's no doubt at the end of the day. We have been reactive when we should have had all this kind of left-of-boom planning. I mean, we could have had this conversation, David, you know, two months ago and said, hey, if we invade Iran, what's going to happen if we launched the capitations rights, and I would have said, well, there'd be asymmetric attacks. Iran would close a straight-of-war moves. They'd be striking their Gulf allies. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. I'm a knuckle drag or case officer, but it seems like we were surprised. And I'm not sure, I think the American people deserve to know why that is the case, because I'm still confused on what happened.

Okay, well, I have a theory about this, John, and I'd like to run the theory by you, because I think Mark described two possibilities and two perspectives, both of which are valid enough, you know, or reasonable conclusions to draw. But we know that it's not either one of those. We know that the issue is that the intelligence is not being presented to the president, and what it is being presented to him is ignoring it. And we know this for a couple of reasons. There's no MSC process to speak of. We know that before this, where he was talking to four people, they did not include people from his intelligence community.

And we also know that what we've recently heard is that the people close to the president weed out what he is getting, because he doesn't like bad news. And we know this from the last administration. You know, John Bolton would tell the NSC staff, "Please do not give bring up or send up anything about Russia. Let me handle that." Because he's too neurologic about Russia, and so it has to be promoted in a certain way. But I think a lot of this has to do with, you know, you can give the best intelligence in the world, but if it doesn't make it to the one decision maker, particularly when we're in a situation now where it really is about one man's opinion.

It's not about a collective process. It breaks down. It was not written. We didn't create a system to serve a single individual in this way. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are.

My first assignment overseas was in Finland. I suffered learning this horrible Finnish language back there in the Cold War days when it was the biggest Soviet embassy in the world, and there was that term "finalization," right? It was self-sensorship. It's you eventually create a culture, whether you know it or not, that you don't say things to upset the big neighbor or the big. That's what I really worry about longer with the intelligence community. The fact that Trump doesn't like the intelligence community, it's bad, but that's not the biggest risk. He's normalizing a presidency that treats independent expertise as an illegitimate, right?

So if we slowly create a culture where officials aren't honest, aren't truthful, or hold back intelligence, that's a real problem. We took pride in marketing I were there, is telling truth to power.

In fact, you almost take special pride if you're telling them something they don't want to hear. If it's like messing with their policy, like hey, too bad, this is what we see the truth is.

And we're moving in the opposite direction, and that's a bigger problem for the country when you have an intelligence service. It's afraid to or gets fired when they tell to it the power. One quick thing, a quick story on this, because I remember when David Petraeus, who's a former forestar general, the central command, she became the CI director and in a brief and one time, a young GS12 analyst, very junior analyst, said to him, "Sir, you're wrong." And he nearly fell out of his chair, and he was not used to this, but that's the ethos of the agency, you know, you tell truth to power.

“And the analyst felt absolutely not only you felt obliged to actually do that, and was celebrated after that. I thought it was quite funny. I think Petraeus wasn't happy about it, but that's what you need.”

You have to kind of step up and say, "Nope." And you know what, and you suffer the consequences, but that's okay.

Yeah, no, I've seen zero dark 30, I know how this works. But just to follow up on that, Mark, that is an ethos, that is a culture. And I've just got to believe that you and John are getting a lot of calls from people you know, saying, "Well, how do I become a glamorous TV commentator and get the fuck out of this place? Because they're ruining it." And you know, clearly you guys have hit the jackpot and are, you know, live in large as a result, but, but, but, but, but I, you know, it's seriously how do you retain quality people in an intelligence community that is being abused this way?

So David, that's a, a really important question. And you know, John and I were at a conference in St. Andrews, a couple months ago, and we kind of talked about the future of the intelligence community. And one of the, and a key facet of this is that the senior leadership there's left. I have maybe one or two people I still actually talked to or know who's inside. They have done everything such as, you know, early outs, you know, some forced, you know, people told to retire, but, you know, that, that senior expert cadre of analysts and operations officers were either forced out or voluntarily left.

You know, they could retire. And so, that expertise is gone. And that is incredibly concerning. And so, you know, John Radcliffe CI director and recent testimony talked about how morale was great at the agency. And I'm literally getting my, you know, my phone is blowing up because that's just not the case. I ran into someone who just retired at the gym the other day.

“The morale is absolutely in the toilet because this leadership's terrible. They're never there. We're actually spending all this time at the White House. And so, I think that just, you know, the future of the place is is in doubt, also because.”

And I'm going to go back a couple months at the beginning of the Trump administration when they were forcing out junior officers. And in fact, if you remember, there was this incredible story, which I would imagine it's true, is reported in the press. But as part of the doge effort, the agency sent down in essence the names of, you know, four successive classes of junior officers, thereby compromising their cover. And so, you know, not only did have senior officers left, there's the junior officer cadre that that was seriously compromised. And so you have this, this lack of expertise, you know, and it's going to take years and years to recover.

Just like a friend of ours ambassador, you know, George Kent, who talks about the state department, 25% of the state department is gone. That's staggering.

“And so the same thing with the agency, and you know, I think the perfect vignette and John will remember this is, you know, a friend of mine who just retired.”

I asked him, I said, you know, what's morale like, what's the like walking around headquarters? You said, everyone's miserable. Everyone's terrified.

And guess what, you can get parking everywhere. And John and I know you could never find a parking spot.

In the end, but ultimately, folks are listening, this is what matters in a bureaucracy.

Well, yeah. Exactly right. I would recommend. When I was a under secretary of commerce, I had a big office. That was fine. But I had my own bathroom.

And I was the only person in a 2400 person agency that had his own bathroom. And that really, oh, my God, people was that it didn't matter what I was doing. They were like, oh, he is his own bathroom. Yeah, kind of, you know, the courtyard window parking. Yeah.

But that's so, but there's, so there's parking spots open.

“So I think that there is, you know, for the, for the future of the agency,”

what I worry about is to take a long time. The other, the last piece on this is that, you know, both John and I've done this for a while. I go and speak to colleges constantly. And I've had, you know, I've mentored lots of young officers. And so, you know, I can no longer advocate for people to join the intelligence community for a couple of reasons.

One because the politicization of what's happening. But number two is a whole bunch of people who I helped get jobs there and walked them through the process. Then got let go. And they went through this painful process of getting security clearances. And so, you know, I've got an email from someone said, I just, I literally, I just, I just had was walked out the door.

Because as a probationary officer and the intelligence community, you actually have no rights. They can fire you for anything up till you. I think you're four year mark.

“And so, you know, I think there's, you know, there's going to be less applications.”

There's going to be less people interested in joining for the job security. But also because they see a president who doesn't seem to care much about the organization. I think there's a long way to go. There's a whole other issue in terms of how the director of operations can operate. And what we call the ubiquitous technical surveillance environment.

We could do a whole other program on this David. But it's all the idea of how spying has changed, how, you know, how we operate out of embassies, might not be actually appropriate because we can get, we get caught too much. And so, I think the place is, it isn't really big trouble. And John heard my little speech that I gave a couple months ago, where I think, you know,

my, my, I was advocating to tear the whole place down and start a fresh. Because I just don't think we're even positioned into, you know, to take the, you know, kind of this, the art of espionage into the, into the next century.

“Well, I, I think, you know, be careful what you wish for.”

Because it sure sounds like they're tearing the place down intentionally or otherwise. And so just as the final question here, John, I'd like you to follow up on what Mark was saying. But again, let's just pull back the lens a little bit from a strategic perspective and look out, not just at the current issue, but beyond. The situation you crane is not getting better, it's getting worse.

There are real, you know, issues with the potential decline of NATO and the shift in the balance within Europe. Towards the Russians who clearly this administration is leaning towards. We not only have a reset in the Middle East, but we do have a reset in the Asia Pacific region. And frankly, it looks, you know, if the Chinese are not emboldened by this, they're not paying attention. Because the president of the United States is giving everybody language signal.

That he's perfectly happy for, you know, China take back Taiwan. You know, as long as we have enough chips, he doesn't care. And so this is a big change, global situation. And say there's a new president in 2029. There's no NSC now.

The State Department is down 25, 30% by then. The intelligence community has been hollowed out. The leaders at DOD have been, you know, courage. You can't just throw a switch and have an effective national security community back again. And so it looks like not only do we have a couple of years of a lunatic running the US government ignoring these things. But we've got years after that, we're going to have to get back to having some kind of functioning community while from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, not to mention Africa, not to mention the obsession with the Caribbean at the moment.

The world's, I'm fire. It's, it does could not sound like a worse scenario to me, but how does it look to you?

Yeah, thanks for that one. Well, first I go back to Mark's thing about you.

I remember there was a book, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago that was popular called the "How the Irish Saves Civilization". It was about how the Irish monks in the Middle Ages went down to Europe and took the learning and knowledge from the libraries as they were, you know, as the Hords came in, we're burning them and kept them for several hundred years. And I then re-brought the learning back to Europe and something. So in a certain sense, we're almost on that situation. Like somehow, people are going to have to take, you know, the experience and knowledge, you know, our great secrets and find a way to hide it and hold it so that maybe when it comes time to rebuilding we can.

But the bigger question you had, you guys talked earlier about how Trump is running the government almost like a mafia, like a mafia boss.

You know, just it's about him and security and toughness and all that kind of stuff.

“And in some ways, I think the biggest strategic issue that you brought up is just that.”

Like if you're in a mob mentality and you're worried about stability, you're going to arm yourself. And so proliferation is that things strategically is going to be a big problem. I mean, there is incentives now for everybody to get their own nuclear weapons, right? So Iran was on the cusp, therefore we attacked them.

Russia has nuclear weapons, we we caught all them China and stuff.

So you know, polls, the Japanese, the Koreans, everybody's going to have to feel their need that they need. They're going to need nuclear weapons to protect themselves that protection we gave to the Gulf States proved itself to be worthless.

“And so it's going to it's it's a world that is changing and not just in the United States.”

So your your your challenge, David, about how do we rebuild here is is massive in huge and. The damage he does every day creates 30 days of damage in the future. Also around the world, the same thing is happening.

I mean, right, even just, you know, the last month of activity in Iran.

We're so focused on our gas prices, which is, you know, for domestic politics, I totally understand. But huge swaths of the world, and the Philippines are down to like a three day work week because they can't open their offices because they don't have energy. And this is happening in Thailand and it's messing with India, it's messing with all these other countries. The whole world is is being screwed up because of one adult man here in the United States. Do you think that these people are ever going to trust us or want to work with us again when we had created a system that people.

Despite our foibles want needed and wanted to work with us and I don't think they're going to. And so we got real challenges ahead domestically and around the world. Well, I have to say. I, you know, it's nice to see you guys again. I haven't spoken to it a while.

And, and I feel just terrible. But, but it's a beautiful.

“Yeah, well, don't understand, but it's also the reason why it's so important.”

To to hear from you and why I really encourage people to follow all the various things that both of you are doing. Because this is a moment of crisis, but it looks very likely that we're going to head into a period of. A protracted serial crisis because of what got us here. And, and you need, you need smart people understand it and both of you are certainly that. So thank you very much, Mark.

Thank you very much, John. Thank you very much, everybody. For listening will be on top of these things and who knows. Men will offer breakfast or something and these guys will come back again. But there's fluid or definitely come back.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely.